As Egg Prices Soar, the Deadliest Bird Flu Outbreak in US History Drags on
upstart writes:
Risk to humans is low, but epidemiologists fear a future pandemic by such a flu:
The ongoing bird flu outbreak in the US is now the longest and deadliest on record. More than 57 million birds have been killed by the virus or culled since a year ago, and the deadly disruption has helped propel skyrocketing egg prices and a spike in egg smuggling.
Since highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) A(H5N1) was first detected in US birds in January 2022, the price of a carton of a dozen eggs has shot up from an average of about $1.79 in December 2021 to $4.25 in December 2022, a 137 percent increase, according to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Although inflation and supply chain issues partly explain the rise, eggs saw the largest percentage increase of any specific food, according to the consumer price index.
[...] Still, America's pain in grocery store dairy aisles likely pales compared to some of the devastation on poultry farms. HPAI A(H5N1) has been detected in wild birds in all 50 states, and 47 have reported outbreaks on poultry farms. So far, there have been 731 outbreaks across 371 counties. At the end of last month, two outbreaks in Weakley County, Tennessee, affected 62,600 chickens.
[...] In the current outbreak, the CDC has tracked more than 5,000 people who have had contact with infected birds but only found a single case of bird flu in a human. The reported case in Colorado came from a person who worked directly with infected birds and was involved with a cull. The person had mild symptoms and recovered.
Although the current data is comforting, virologists and epidemiologists still fear the potential for flu viruses, such as bird flu, to mutate and recombine into a human-infecting virus with pandemic potential. [...]
[...] As such, the authors say it is necessary to "strengthen the culture of biosafety and biosecurity in this farming system and promote the implementation of ad hoc surveillance programs for influenza A viruses and other zoonotic pathogens at a global level."
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